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Michael Tomasky

The coming attempt to impeach Obama

Okay, but surely, you say, if facts don’t matter, then public opinion does? Think again, my friend. In 1998, support for impeachment of Bill Clinton was rarely above 30 percent. Here’s a little sampling of surveys from August and September of that year, during the heat of battle—the release of Clinton’s grand-jury testimony and of the Starr Report. Levels of support for impeachment were 26 percent, 25, 18, 27, 17, and so on. There was one poll where it hit 40 percent, but most were far lower. And remember, in political terms, 40 is the butt end of a massive landslide. The public hated the idea.

Did that stop anyone? No. And it won’t stop them now. They do their base’s bidding, not America’s. How many times do you need to see them do this before you accept that it is the reality? And now there’s an added element. They want to gin up turnout among their base for next year’s elections. And if they gin it up enough, and the Democratic base stays home, they could end up holding the House and taking the Senate. And if they have both houses, meaning that the vote in the House would not be certain to hit a Senate dead-end, well, look out.

I hope the White House knows this. I hope they understand, I hope the President himself understands, that the fever has not broken and will not break. It might crescendo right up to his very last day in office. And yes, a lot of this Benghazi stuff is about Hillary Clinton. But not all of it. And the IRS thing, which Drudge led with for two days in a row and may yet be bigger than Benghazi, isn’t about her at all. If my worst fears are never realized—well, good, obviously. But it will only be because they couldn’t identify even a flimsy pretext on which to proceed. Never put the most extreme behavior past them. It is who they are, and it is what they do.

Blowback

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Impeach? Nah. Not right now, at any rate. It’s unlikely the Senate would vote to remove Obama anyway. Let’s just see where these rabbit holes (Benghazi and an activist IRS) go. Watching the opposition squirm may provide weeks, even months, of entertainment.

Aitch748 on May 13, 2013 at 1:10 PM

This.

Much better to simply neuter him for the rest of his term. It’s more fun exposing the trolls and the media for the 0bama leg-humpers they are.

I wont give Tomasky the click, but I would have liked to read what kind of “facts” he think speak against Obamas impeachment. I dont care about public opinion. Congress is charged with oversight of the executive no matter what polls say.

Getting Obama impeached would be the easy part, since that only requires a simple majority in the House. Its the seperate removal from office thats difficult, because it requires a 2/3 majority in the Senate.

And I would be quite happy to impeach Obummer and then fail to remove him from office. That we cant have it all doesnt mean that we shouldnt throw punches.

Is President Joe Biden really an improvement? Maybe it would have been to start – an idiot is better than a malignant mediocrity – but that ship has sailed. None of these scandals are new. America knew Obama purebred Chicago pol with a Manchurian background, and they reelected him anyway. America has the president it wants.

More to the point, because America has the president it wants, it’ll never happen. Ever.

If there are smoking gun memos showing the obvious truth – that Obama assented to Fast and Furious, the IRS harassment, the inaction at Benghazi – then it would be the duty of the House to at least rightfully impeach him. But even that would be a vain exercise. Truth and justice count for zilch.

And there are at least 52% ‘low-information voters’ and extreme progressives protecting him.
No – old reasoning does not apply. We’re in a new place now.
Tsar of Earth on May 13, 2013 at 12:43 PM

That’s right and why I wouldn’t be surprised to see MO win 2016. The perfect couple in power forever. He is some sort of deity to that 52% an the Os can do no wrong. Heck I was at a cookout yesterday and being in MA it was of course dominated with members of that 52%. People there were talking about how wonderful it would be if MO were made president, got that, made not elected, in 2016 and then we would work on that nasty requirement for 35 yeqars of age so that their spawn could continue on after MO’s 2 terms. Others talked about doing away with term limits so BO can continue to be in office. These people were not low info on the dole types. This country has lost its collective mind with the election of this turkey and I fear we may never get it back.

That’s not a very good argument. Biden is an idiot. Obama is a malicious idiot. I prefer an idiot over a malicious idiot.

But Obama still won’t get impeached let alone removed from office. Nobody has the guts to impeach the “historic” president, no matter what crimes he commits.
The Rogue Tomato on May 13, 2013 at 1:24 PM

But Biden is white idiot which could make all the difference in MSM support.

Your second point is more to the point and is why I think he was reelected. Many just couldn’t handle the “historic” president being a one term failure and that is what he would have been with only a single term.

Like someone said in an earlier thread, the real goal should be to get Clinton and 0bama to throw one another over the bus. This will cause the media to split between Team Hilly and Team Bammy, and between the doxing, real journalism might start being done.

This is what 0bama didn’t count on: The moment he became a lame duck, saving 0bama won’t save liberalism. Their pet journ0lists won’t have the same idea as to what will be best for liberalism going forward, but as long as 0bama can’t be re-re-elected, there is less incentive to defend him from criticism.

There is quite a bit of historical inaccuracy re: Clinton’s impeachment/conviction with this author. Clinton was easily impeached, and only escaped conviction by the most narrow of margins. There were quite a few Dems who were convinced at the last minute to not throw Clinton under the bus. Impeachment/conviction isn’t intended to be a reflection of popular will, but of the existence of violation of law, which Clinton most certainly did.